Episode 112: Is Time Ours to Manage or God’s to Give?

Do you derive your value and identity from productivity? Do you try to live beyond your limits? Do you try to live a super-human life rather than a human life that is Spirit-filled?

Most of us are constantly asking how we can get more done in the 24 hours a day we each have. We read books, go to workshops, and download apps to help us manage our to-do lists and be as productive as possible. But if we’re honest, I think we also suspect we’re missing the point. Something is off. We work hard and run fast through our day, but we’re usually exhausted and unsatisfied when we come to the end of it. This conversation with Jen Pollock Michel is so helpful in trying to understand work, productivity, and our limitations as humans.

Jen Pollock Michel and I talk about:

  • How time management originated in factories with stop watches and how keeping time mechanically is altogether inhuman.

  • Whether or not productivity and time management are even for our good.

  • How women are often required to manage both shifts—the one at work and the one at home.

  • What God’s time is like—he is from everlasting to everlasting, so how does he measure productivity?

  • How the posture of time management is really just about control.

  • How God is the maker and giver of time. As humans we must receive time in whatever ways God deems is for our good.

  • How to confront our own frenetic energy and our idolatrous urgency to produce.

  • Considering a practice of gratitude and receiving the limitations in our lives.

  • The idea of a Rule of Life—developing routines and habits and practices that will help us to love God and neighbor.

Jen Pollock Michel: https://www.jenpollockmichel.com/

In Good Time, by Jen Pollock Michell: https://us.10ofthose.com/product/9781540900548/in-good-time-paperback

A Habit called Faith by Jen Pollock Michel: https://us.10ofthose.com/product/9781540900531/a-habit-called-faith-paperback/?affiliate=jenoshman

The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction by Justin Whitmel Earley: https://us.10ofthose.com/product/9780830845606/the-common-rule-paperback?affiliate=jenoshman